I am constantly reminded in my personal life as welll as in my professional life, of the necessity to use well-designed equipment. What do I mean by that?
My cell phone is an Apple iPhone 6. Although I had experienced a problem 8 months into its life, Apple promptly replaced it. Other than that issue, this phone in addition to other iPhones I have owned, have all been good performers. I regularly drop it and it comes right back for more punishment.
The table saw that my primary wood worker uses is a high quality, commercial grade unit costing $2-3,000 It also works well and doesn't fail. It does need a new motor now and again due to wear, but other than that, my craftsman can rely on that tool to get the job done.
My Toyota car is almost 10 years old. I bought it specifically because I knew that a Toyota would take me well into the future with very little maintenance. I am happy to report, it has done exacly that and I regularly joke that I will drive it to the nursing home some day!
Our Ball Winders and Swifts are like my woodworker's table saw and my Toyota. All of these tools are well-designed and being well designed, the designers have endeavored to design tools that would give their users a sufficiently long product life without a lot of failures or breakdowns.
Our ball winders and swifts are so well designed, I put them in the Apple and Toyota class of products. Sure, the ball winder needs to be cleaned occasionally, and the rubber o-ring needs to be replaced every 2-3 years. But that is minor and the fact that they are made of substantial component strength and quality, combined with a World Class design means that these products will outlive me. I can only hope that they will outlive their owners as well and that some day a fiber artist in the future will look back at the quality of these tools and say to themselves: "they don't make them the way they used to anymore" (when comparing them to similar tools made during their own timeframe). In that sense, they will have perfomed longer than the Apple iPhone and Toyota car which means we will have suceeded in making a World Class product.
Always use the best tools that you can afford.